How a Corporate Spy Stole Dupont’s Billion-Dollar Formula for the Color White

DuPont has the chemical formula for the immaculate ultrawhite you see on brand-new refrigerators and Ford Mustang GTs. It’s a compound known as titanium dioxide. In the 1940s, DuPont chemists refined a process to produce the superior version of the color. It became a $2.6 billion business. Twenty-five years ago (if not longer), the Chinese government and state-run businesses began attempting to steal DuPont’s formula for titanium dioxide. Read Del Quentin Wilber’s Bloomberg story here.